About
Shattered Windscreen
Shattered Windscreen Theatre Company was formed in 1991 with a debut production of Steven Berkoff’s adaptation of Agamemnon performed at the newly refurbished Barn Theatre in Welwyn Garden City. In 1992, Jan Palmer Sayer’s production of Berkoff’s The Fall of the House of Usher toured England and Scotland, winning the Falkirk Drama Festival and the All Winners Festival in Felixstowe, and featuring original music written and performed by Patrick Bailey, a conductor then at London’s Royal Academy of Music.
The company reformed in 1994 to begin work on some Theatre in Education. The Tempest (at the end of the pier) toured some Hertfordshire schools and theatres in 1995, and the following summer a modern dress production of Hamlet did the same. In 1997 the group took a production to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival for the first time, and were nominated for Total Theatre’s Best Newcomer award. The show was another Poe-inspired piece – The Pit and the Pendulum.
In 1998, the group took a break from touring, but in 1999, celebrated the 25th anniversary of The Fall of the House of Usher by taking a new production of it around the usual home counties venues, extending as far as Richmond Shakespeare Society for a one night stand before playing to sell-out houses on the Edinburgh Fringe. For its Millennium production, the company returned to the bard, abridging A Midsummer Night’s Dream, with the intention of playing as many open air venues as possible.
For the 2001 production, the company took its own adaptation of Peter Barnes’ television play, Arabian Nights to the Minack Theatre, Cornwall where it played to sell-out houses. The stunning cliffside theatre, perched as it is above the dramatic Atlantic surges, proved an ideal setting for this thrilling piece, and so begun a long standing relationship with The Minack Theatre. From 2001 onwards, the company have taken a show to the cliffs of Cornwall every other year.